We
celebrated All Saint’s Sunday by naming those who died last year – members, relatives of members, and others who
were important to us – and showing slides of them to call up their memory. We gave thanks for their lives and prayed for
those who mourned their death and remembered their life.
The
scripture was from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi :
Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever
is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of
praise, think about these things.
I have always found Wesley’s use of scripture, tradition, reason and experience
as sources for theology useful. On All
Saint’s it is experience which comes to the fore. What we know of God and grace and the
practice of the faith we know through those who have embodied it for us. The yare the source of our experience.
If we can, we should give thanks for what we
have received.
Of course sometimes we cannot. We look back and we wish that we could change
the past. We cannot. But as one of my teachers told us: turn the
wish, or the demand, that the past be different into a preference. “I wish it had gone this way…” I asked people to remember someone who would
have done things differently if they had been there and then to tell themselves that they would have
preferred that this person had been present. Changing our language and expressing a
preference can move us out of the past.
More often, at least for me, I can give thanks. The blessing is that
we mourn people who lived lives we wish we could imitate. In another letter Paul gives us a list of
qualities worth demonstrating: the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Of course there are others. The list is incomplete.
I regard
those as disciplines: works I need to practice.
To help with my practice, I visualize, I remember, people who had those
qualities and how they used them. I
cannot be them but I can copy them and hope.
So on this day I give thanks to them for giving
me a partial experience of “God” or at least God’s grace in the flesh. And I give thanks to God for those “saints.”
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